That seemingly incongruous formula has been seized on by a growing number of watchdog groups, self-styled reformers and student activists who have set up more than a dozen super PACs aimed at putting a stop to unrestricted campaign spending.

With names such as America&rsquo;s Super PAC for the Permanent Elimination of America&rsquo;s Super PACs, Citizens Against Super PACs and No Dirty Money Elections, these protest political action committees are sober-minded, satirical or sometimes both.

Take CREEP, a super PAC set up by Georgetown University graduate student Robert Lucas. The name is a tongue-in-cheek reference the Nixon-era Committee for the Re-Election of the President, which organized the Watergate break-ins 40 years ago.

But Lucas, 23, has a high-minded goal of &ldquo;raising voices, not dollars,&rdquo; as he put it and is pushing for both public financing of campaigns and tax code reforms that would pull back the curtain on election-related spending. He has no plans to back candidates or party committees.

On the lighter side is Everyone&rsquo;s Favorite Group of Socially Acceptable People Who Have Happy Funtime Ideas and Team, which registered with the Federal Election Commission on April 6 with no stated Web address or objectives.

By contrast, the newly registered Friends of Democracy PAC is the work of a pair of well-known progressive organizers: David Donnelly, executive director of the Public Campaign Action Fund, and Ilyse Hogue, who has worked as a senior adviser with Media Matters for America. Friends of Democracy will function both as a super PAC and a conventional PAC and will advocate campaign finance changes.

Other super PACs protesting big money in politics include the Occupy Wall Street PAC; People Against the Corporate Manipulation of Election and News, which on its website touts its organizers as &ldquo;everyday, non-billionaire, non-lobbyist people&rdquo;; and You Forgot Us, which on its site asks: &ldquo;Tired of the Big Money controlling the country? Wondering what you, the average American citizen, can do about it?&rdquo;

It costs nothing to register a super PAC with the FEC, and the process involves filling out a simple form, as comedian Stephen Colbert demonstrated on his popular TV show. The father of all satirical super PACs, as the organizer behind Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow, Colbert spawned a wave of copycat PACs when he sold 1,000 versions of his $99 &ldquo;Colbert Super PAC Super Fun Pack&rdquo; within a week this spring.

One taker was Massachusetts Institute of Technology&rsquo;s Michael Invernale, a post-doctoral student doing diabetes research, who set up a super PAC dubbed Americans for a More American America to promote a campaign finance overhaul.

Invernale, 28, plunked down his $99 in part in hopes of winning the &ldquo;Treasure Hunt&rdquo; included in the &ldquo;Fun Pack,&rdquo; which promises that the first person to find Colbert&rsquo;s 101-year-old sterling silver turtle will win a free campus appearance by Colbert. Invernale is going to start with a satirical YouTube video and try to raise enough money for a local TV ad.

&ldquo;It is a serious political message but through the venue of satire, in the spirit of Colbert,&rdquo; Invernale said.

Purdue University graduate student Jonathan Rachowicz, who describes himself in FEC filings as &ldquo;high treasurer&rdquo; of America&rsquo;s Super PAC for the Permanent Elimination of America&rsquo;s Super PACs, bought Colbert&rsquo;s Fun Pack with a similar goal.

He has set out to raise at least $1,000 from his classmates to underwrite some fliers, newsletters and possibly even a TV ad promoting the message that citizens should call for a constitutional amendment stating that corporations should not be considered people.

So far, Rachowicz says, he has collected &ldquo;a couple of bucks from a couple of friends.&rdquo; But he reasoned that if he could collect even $1 from 1,000 classmates, he would have enough to work with.

For the FEC, purely satirical PACs present a potential administrative burden. The commission has a right to terminate PACs for a variety of reasons, including instances when a committee is inactive for a full year.

Earlier this year the commission terminated about five dozen PACs all run by the same treasurer, Josue Larose of Florida, who had registered a long list of apparently inactive super PACs with names ranging from United States School Teachers Super PAC to K Street Lobbying Firms Super PAC.

Depending on their activity, some of the satirical super PACs launched in this election may meet the same fate.